Media jostles for ownership of Ali

Australian newspapers have joined British tabloids in a campaign to help Ali Abbas. Murray Mottram reports.

Ali Ismail Abbas, the boy who had his arms blown off by a US bomb in Baghdad, was recovering from surgery in Kuwait yesterday to remove the dead skin covering much of his body.

Imad Najada, of the Saud Albabtain centre for burns, said a temporary layer of human skin, from the clinic's skin bank, was laid across the orphaned boy's burns.

"He's recovering. He will be OK," Dr Najada said.

Ali is one of the lucky few to escape Baghdad's hospitals, where staff shortages, looting and blackouts have reduced medical care to patch-up jobs.

But in the coming days, the progress of 12-year-old Ali will be charted in minute detail around the world as media and aid organisations use his plight to symbolise the suffering in Iraq.");document.write("

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Yesterday, Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph followed the lead of two British newspapers in running a fund-raising campaign under the banner of "How you can help little Ali".

The appeal will raise money for the Australian division of UNICEF to provide water, sanitation, medical supplies and food to Iraqi children. The children's fund has already raised $350,000 for Iraq in Australia.

UNICEF spokeswoman Pam Garcia said Ali had become a symbol. "People need something they can identify with," she said. "You can give out the statistics on malnourishment and kids who don't have a school, but when you see a picture of a little boy with no arms and who has lost his whole family it really brings it home."

In Britain, The Mirror has raised more than $500,000 using Ali as the poster child of its campaign. The newspaper yesterday reported that US marines flew Ali to Kuwait following a direct plea from British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the Americans after he read "a heart-rending plea for help" from the youngster's nurse".

Australian Red Cross spokesman Ian Wolverton said the organisation had been approached by Channel Ten to promote an appeal using the image of Ali.

"We said we can't take donations for just one person," he said. "It is an extremely good way of energising the public, but the money we raise is used to assist our programs in that part of the world."

World Vision's Australian fund-raiser for Iraq uses a montage of images from the war. A spokeswoman said Australians often responded to stories such as Ali's because it put a human face to large-scale tragedies.

"However, this must be carefully balanced against the need . . . to ensure we are not exploiting any child's suffering," the spokeswoman said.

Photographs of Ali's armless, scorched torso have been given much more space in British and European media than in the US, but columnists on both sides of the Atlantic have commented on the ethics of "branding" the war aid effort with his image.

Leonard Pitts, in the Miami Herald, wondered if Ali was being used to ease Western consciences.

"There is always an Ali," he said, "always some face emerging from the catastrophe that has maimed hundreds of people, burned away thousands of lives.

"If we can just help him, maybe it will make up forall the ones we couldn't help. People around the world open their wallets for Ali. They seek to save a ruined boy. I tend to think he is saving us as well."